The recent Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, or ARC, conference saw a global cavalcade of conservative talking heads, knuckle draggers and chronic sufferers of relevance deprivation syndrome descend on London. While there they made a considerable and lasting contribution to the atmospheric output of hot air. The conference featured a shallow talent pool of political has‑beens, such as failed United States House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, failed Australian Prime Ministers Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, and the currently struggling Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Foremost among these professional outrage generators was former Prime Minister John Howard, who took the opportunity to denigrate our nation's multiculturalism. He said:
"Multiculturalism is a concept that I've always had trouble with. I take the view that if people want to emigrate to a country, then they adopt the values and practices of that country."
His comments were not only incendiary but also untrue. I say to Mr Howard that multiculturalism is a core Australian value. In an article critical of Howard's comments, Joe Hildebrand—of all people—wrote:
"Democracy, it is worth remembering, is the fundamental belief that people with differing views can peacefully coexist if we all accept that we all have a say even if we might not always get what we want.
...
Thus democracy itself is in its very essence multicultural."
In my electorate of Leppington we live and breathe the benefits of multiculturalism, and I am privileged to attend the many festivals, dinners, ceremonies and events that our community holds throughout the year. Multiculturalism was central to the Australian character long before Mr Howard took on the Prime Ministership. One might argue that multiculturalism began with the arrival of the First Fleet. Indeed, the convicts that arrived in January 1788 were themselves a multicultural bunch. I trace my heritage back to the First Fleet and a convict named John Randall, an African American and former slave born in Connecticut. More recently, the Whitlam Government introduced an official policy of multiculturalism, repealing the White Australia Policy and passing the Racial Discrimination Act. Malcolm Fraser's Liberal Government, of which Mr Howard was a senior member, proceeded with multiculturalism, cementing it as a bipartisan policy and a core national value.
It is my strong belief that chief among the reasons we are such a successful multicultural nation is our public education system. During my 13 years of public schooling I experienced and was witness to the great equaliser and enabler that is public education, not just through a levelling of class and socioeconomic circumstances but as a place that sees kids discover and understand each other's culture, customs, languages and religions The public school playground is one of the most effective environments for younger generations to both foster racial and cultural harmony and push back on the bigotry of older generations. No wonder one of the Howard Government's lasting contributions was the underfunding of our public schools. In 2007 Howard described the public school as a "safety net", there to provide the minimum standard of education for those who could not afford better private schools.
In keeping with this, Howard only funded public schools to the lowest of standards. The disparity between funding for public and private schools under Howard is stark. Between 1999 and 2005, Federal funding for public schools increased by $261 per student, compared with $1,584 for each private school student. Under his Government, while new private schools were opened, almost 200 public schools shut their doors. Howard's rhetoric matched his policies, openly denigrating the public school system. His decade in power saw a misleading culture war unleashed on public schools, including false claims about failing standards, lack of numeracy and literacy skills, disciplinary issues and a general portrayal of public schools as being unsavoury. The Howard era, and it's perverse thinking on conservative politics, still reverberates today.
I see this shameful legacy in my electorate, where not one public high school was built by the previous Liberal Government to accommodate the exponential growth in Austral, Denham Court and Leppington. When reflecting on Mr Howard's comments, it is not hard to understand why he lost his diverse Bennelong electorate in 2007 and why his party has lost so many seats with large multicultural communities more recently. In addition to my seat of Leppington, the Liberals lost East Hills and Parramatta, saw Kogarah run away from them and—as the member opposite will know—hold Ryde by a measly 54 votes. At the most recent Federal election, the Liberals lost Bennelong, Reid and North Sydney in New South Wales. To those opposite, I offer a word of advice: Wheeling out John Howard, whose fossilised ideas belong to a bygone era, does not resonate or reflect today's Australia. Thankfully, it is evident that, almost two decades since his Prime Ministership, Australia has moved beyond him. The Liberal Party might do well to do the same.
